


it's still there...

by gotham_ruaidh



Series: Gotham Writes for Imagine Claire & Jamie [76]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 14:06:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12533256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotham_ruaidh/pseuds/gotham_ruaidh
Summary: Some missing moments from 03x06...





	it's still there...

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted at [Imagine Claire & Jamie](https://imagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com/post/166817219837/its-still-there) on tumblr

Fifty-six breaths tickling her curls.

Sixty-eight heartbeats shuffling under her ear.

His left hand curved over her right, tucked against his hip, fingers lacing and unlacing.

And then –

“Canna sleep?”

Eyes still closed, she nuzzled against the warm, secret space below his jaw. Delighting in the rasp of his stubble, burning her nose and chin.

“Can *you*?”

She kissed the pulse thrumming in his neck, tightening her grip on his fingers. Joying in the simple pleasure of his body reacting to hers – and hers reacting to his.

“I feel so very tired, *mo nighean donn*,” he confessed. She smiled against the pleasant buzz of his voice, rumbling under her lips. His right hand drifted down her side, the pads of his fingers tracing the bump of her hipbone, then resting gently on her arse. Not in want – but reassurance.

*I’m here,* their bodies told each other. *I’m here, and I’m never going anywhere again.*

He kissed her forehead. “But I canna sleep. I – I canna miss even one minute wi’ ye.”

Now she shifted up on the pillow, nose gently squashed against his.

“We have all the time in the world,” she breathed against his mouth. Then kissed his wide, sweet smile. Feeling so alive.

—

“You’re right,” she sighed against his shoulder, sometime later. “It was the right thing to do, to go back. I would have fought with you on that moor.”

He drew the sheet a bit tighter around her shoulders. “It was no place for a woman, Claire. I – ye wouldna have been able to keep up wi’ me. The mud was sae deep, and the fog…”

“Sshh.” Her hand had floated up to close his lips. “Not now. When you’re ready. But not now.”

He kissed her fingers – then her iron ring.

“It was a hard birth. If I hadn’t died on that field – “

A shudder raced through him. He dug his nails into the soft flesh of her sides.

“No – ”

“…then I would have, in childbirth. Had I stayed.”

Still he held on to her – gripped her – tight.

“And because I had fought so hard for her, Jamie – because I had sacrificed so much for her – I didn’t want to leave her. Not even to find you.”

His eyes were almost black, in the light of their single candle. Silent. Patient.

“It’s no’ that I’m ungrateful for having ye here wi’ me, Claire – but I understand.” His voice was deep – sounded so very far away.

And she knew, in that second, that he was not there, in bed with her, in the whorehouse in Edinburgh. But hundreds of miles to the south, in a stable, where again he could not live under his own name.

“Of course you do.” She smoothed a few flyaway strands of hair at his crown, tracing the high cheekbones he had bestowed upon his daughters – and his son.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, Claire. Other than bring ye to the stones, before Culloden – because we had a good reason. And I needed to see ye safe.”

Beneath the coverlet, his hand slid down to find hers.

“At least ye understood why ye had to leave. W-Willie, he didna understand why I had to go. It was for his own good, but how could I explain that to him?”

Suddenly his tall, tired frame shivered. Claire melted against his side, holding him, protecting him from his memories.

“To walk away from yer own flesh and blood – Claire, I – ”

She kissed his shoulder, now clammy with sweat. “Hush. I understand.”

Blindly his mouth sought hers, and she kissed him long and sweet and deep.

After a while they parted, and he sniffed. She offered the corner of her sheet, and he let out a strangled laugh before blowing his nose.

“I agonized over it,” she continued, lips pursed. “How could I just leave Bree?”

Rowdy laughter in the hallway – a whore’s giggles, followed by the racing bootsteps and deeper voices of two customers.

“But do you know what she said to me, Jamie? What *our daughter* said?”

Mute, he shook his head. Forehead pressed against hers.

“She said – he gave you to me, Mama. Now I’m giving you to him.”

Jamie gasped. She kissed the fresh tears on his cheeks.

“What a braw lass,” he choked, full of grief and pride. “My God, what a gift.”

She shifted, crawling into his lap. He settled against the headboard, arms wrapped around her tight.

“She is the true blessing of my life – and Frank knew. He loved her with his whole heart. You need to know that.”

“I dinna doubt it. Ye did so well wi’ her, Claire. So well.”

He settled his lips on her forehead, breathing her hair. She curled her legs to straddle his hips.

“When you asked me earlier if I had left Frank to come back to you…what would you have done if I’d said yes?”

Twelve breaths and eighteen heartbeats she waited.

“I would have asked ye right there in the printshop why ye’d come back. Even if ye’d chosen me before – that first time at the stones – for you to choose me over him when ye kent fine that he was alive…and to risk coming through again, for the sake of me…”

Now he pulled back, meeting her eyes. His thumbs cradled her face, stroking the apples of her cheeks, her swollen lips.

“But God help me, Claire – no matter what ye would have said, I’d have fallen on my knees to beg ye to stay.”

Her hands rose to cover his, caressing the bumps of his knuckles. “You’ll never have to do that. I choose *you,* Jamie. Always you. Only you.”

He made a small, incoherent sound at the back of his throat.

“You said it’s always been forever for you…you know it wasn’t for me, at least at the beginning. But it is now, Jamie – it has been for a very long time.”

Gently, reverently he kissed her eyebrows. The tip of her nose. Her hairline. Her eyelids. Her cheeks. Her chin.

“Ye are my wife.” His voice cracked. “The mother of my child. My – my soul.”

“I told you – I’m never leaving you again.”

“Am I dead?” he whispered.

“No,” she breathed against his lips. “We are alive.”


End file.
